p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Kind People Still Around In The Photographic Community

Just a photography-related note on recent run-ins with kind people.

First up are the nice folks at the Leica repair/service facility in New York (I believe).

Bought a used Leica R lens that I was converting to Nikon F mount, but was missing the aperture click ball detent spring. Now this is a tiny custom spring and can't be found anywhere on line, so I called them up hoping to buy one from them. Nope, wouldn't take my money - they immediately offered to send me one in the mail for free. Had it in 4 or 5 days. Can't beat that!

Next is the Smith-Victor Company:

I'm a fan of Smith-Victor carbon fiber tripods - well featured, well built, and modestly priced - and just got a new CF5 in the mail yesterday form Adorama. I have the smaller/lighter CF1, but at times it's not strong enough, so I bought the much-beefier CF5. The CF1 I have has retractable spiked feet - a feature I use a lot - and descriptions of the CF5 seemed to indicate it would be no different and also have spiked feet.

Well, I open up the box and no spiked feet - just replaceable rubber-tipped feet. I send an e-mail to their sales address asking if they have the option to add spiked feet to this tripod (i.e., perhaps the spiked feet from the CF1 or CF3 will fit this). No immediate response yesterday so this morning I call them up.
I'm immediately vectored to the person who it turns out was just about to send me an e-mail.
They are sending me 3 retractable spiked feet - tuns out they've made a design change and no longer offer this feature, but had some left over parts - for free!

So, in this day and age of customer coming in no where near first in the eyes of many companies it's nice to know that there are still people/companies out there that will go the extra mile to keep customers happy.